Freshening Up Your Shopify Theme: What You Need to Know

[Trevor]

Hey, Shopify users! If you’ve picked a free theme from Shopify, you're in for some great news. Let’s dive into how you can tweak your store’s design to better fit your brand, and the support you can expect along the way.

Understanding the Support Landscape

Shopify offers helpful support for small tweaks if you're using one of their free themes. Quick text adjustments, color changes, and more are all within reach. However, it's crucial to recognize that not all customizations are covered.

For users on Basic Shopify plans or higher, you have 60 minutes of complimentary design support. This means you can submit your customization requests to the team, and they’ll get back to you in about 2-4 business days.

Once your free minutes are up, and if you need more intricate changes, Shopify Partners are available for hire to take your site to the next level.

What Types of Customizations Are Supported?

• Text Adjustments: You can move text, change how prices are displayed, and even revise text alignment on your product pages for clearer communication.
• Image Adjustments: Incorporate custom images or alter the size of existing ones to better fit your layout.
• Color Adjustments: Add extra color settings to make your buttons and links stand out more.
• Layout Changes: Manage how many products appear in a row or tweak the item order in your site’s header.
• Button Tweaks: Add or modify buttons, such as changing the 'Add to Cart' button to a custom contact button depending on your needs.

Keep in mind, these tweaks are just a sample of what's possible!

While Shopify provides a solid foundation with its free themes and support, remember each theme has its capabilities and limitations. Ensure your requests align with what’s available for your chosen theme. This approach will help you make informed decisions and utilize the available resources efficiently.

For those advanced needs, or if you find the free support isn’t enough, the Community Forums and professional Shopify Partners are great next steps.

Learning Through Tutorials

If you're the DIY type, Shopify offers a wealth of tutorials under their Theme Code Customization section. From adding cart features to tweaking product pages, there’s plenty you can do on your own.

Product Pages

• Hide product prices or disable your cart
• Replace 'Add to cart' with a contact link
• Find a variant ID
• Get customers to choose an option
• Hide sold-out variants
• Select variants by clicking their images
• Show featured image until a variant is selected
• Add a quantity selector
• Add a size chart
• Show SKU numbers

Collection Pages

• Add a 'Sort by' menu
• Change the number of products shown
• Change the order of your collections
• Change your catalog page
• Filter collections with product tags

Cart

• Add a 'Continue shopping' link
• Add a delivery date picker
• Add a gift-wrap option
• Add more checkout buttons
• Enable order notes

Forms

• Add a contact page
• Add fields to the customer registration form
• Add fields to your contact form
• Ask how customers heard about your store
• Get consent for promotional emails when customers register

Navigation

• Choose which page to show when customers log in to your store
• Open external links in a new tab

Online Store

• Add a back to top button
• Add a security badge
• Choose which payment icons show in your footer
• Create alternate templates
• Edit your storefront search results
• Remove 'Powered by Shopify'
• Remove the author's name from blog posts